Burned area
satellite only1,170ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 9 Jun 2023 – 10 Jun 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
CN · China · –
Shangcai County fire, 9 June 2023 上蔡县 · Shangcai County
Out · last measured on 10 Jun 2023
The fire started on 9 June 2023 in Shangcai County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,170 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 10th largest in Henan Province since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 166 in China in 2023, of 241.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Fangcheng County · 2017Shangcai County · 2023
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only2days
9 Jun 2023 to 10 Jun 2023: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 9 Jun 2023 – 10 Jun 2023
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only9 Jun 2023
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 9 Jun 2023
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Danger at the start
model18.7FWI · moderate
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 4.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 9 Jun 2023, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model37.3°C · 27% RH
High of 37.3 °C and minimum humidity of 27% on 9 June 2023; gusts of 32 km/h on 10 June 2023.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 9 Jun 2023 – 10 Jun 2023
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 2,400people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 20 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2025).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 1,170 ha
- Dates
- 9 Jun 2023 – 10 Jun 2023
- Name
- Shangcai County
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/shangcai-county-2023-06-2?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire shangcai-county-2023-06-2.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-06-09 | 0 | 0 | 37.3 | 23.7 | 27 | 15.4 | 30.6 | 0 | 18.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2023-06-10 | 0 | 0 | 35.9 | 24.6 | 23 | 16.4 | 31.7 | 0 | 22.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2023-06-11 | 0 | 0 | 34.6 | 22.6 | 30 | 15.5 | 28.8 | 2.4 | 11.8 | moderado | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 1,170ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 9 Jun 2023 – 10 Jun 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 9 Jun
- 2023
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
37°high
32km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity
It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 11 Jun.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,174 ha0.8 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Built-up area20 ha
Residents≈ 2,400
Inside the perimeter there were about 20 hectares of built-up land and about 2,400 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Jun | 37.3 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 10 Jun | 35.9 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 11 Jun after | 34.6 °C | 30 % | 29 km/h | 2.4 mm | Moderate 12 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 18.7, a minimum humidity of 27% and 4 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 1.
FWI at the start
18.7
Minimum humidity
27 %
Days without rain
4
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Shangcai County fire, 9 June 2023
1,170 ha
2 days
FWI 18.7
Min. humidity 27 %
Fangcheng County fire, May 2017
1,881 ha
4 days
FWI 21.8
Min. humidity 14 %
104 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 4.3 mm on 3 Jun.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 1. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
2.4 mmfirst rain
11 Junthe day after it ended
32km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 10 Jun, and on 11 Jun 2.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 2 Jun 2023
After · 17 Jun 2023
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 10 June 2023 the air beside the fire reached 91 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 59: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak91 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10131 µg/m³
Optical depth1.81
WHO 15
7 Jun9 Jun11 Jun13 Jun
Good
Fair
Moderate
Poor
Very poor
Extremely poor
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Shangcai County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 June 2023 and 10 June 2023: 2 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,170 hectares (11.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Shangcai County (1,174 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.